About Roto

From Pioneer to World Market Leader

Our history begins, as in the case of many successful companies, with the name of a personality: Wilhelm Frank.

He became a pioneer with his ideas – like the first industrially-produced Tilt&Turn hardware in 1935 or the slide-in loft ladder. Our company founder was a classic Swabian inventor. Under his direction and that of his immediate successors, Roto developed from being a one-man operation to an international group of companies.

And Elfriede O. Frank, the company founder's wife, played a major role in this development. Thanks to her active involvement and her positive personality, she had a strong influence on the spirit of the company.

Roto has grown to become a large, reputable company. With perseverance and without fusions or by hectically doing things just for the sake of it. Tradition and progress are in perfect harmony at Roto.

Roto has been held the leading position with a large number of products for decades. Why is that? Resourcefulness must be contagious.

In the service of convenient buildings

More than 75 years ago Wilhelm Frank invented a product that we can't imagine was unknown up to that point: Tilt&Turn hardware for windows.

Equipped with this steel design, windows could not only be turned and opened for the first time, but could also be brought into the tilted position and the room ventilated via the resulting gap.

A small but practical invention? It's much more than that: It's part of major activity as a developer and the birth of a corporate group with technological expertise that is still held in high regard today.

But what will windows and doors have to do in the house of the future? And what do the occupants and users of a building expect from its openings? The people at Roto repeatedly ask themselves these questions and develop solutions that point the way to the future in response.